by Lyn Benedict
“No,” he said.
She dogtrotted back to Alex’s jeep, grabbed the tire iron, and took a swing.
“Shadows—”
“Oh, shut up,” she said. “We’ve already desecrated three graves. What’s smashing up a columbarium? Just keep an eye out.”
“There’s no grave dirt,” he said. Without seeming to will it, his gaze slid back to the jeep. The grave dirt, bound neatly in color-coded bags, obviously disturbed him. He’d been edgy ever since she started carting the dirt around, giving her and the bags a wide berth. Maybe lich ghosts needed dirt specific to them, but for other spirits, graveyard dirt apparently didn’t discriminate among the dead. Sylvie only had to recall Wright’s collapse in Invocat to know that.
“The dirt’s all about reminding them they’re dead. Her ashes should be even more successful.” Sylvie put a hand on the plaque, sketched out Margaret Strange’s name, learning the proportions of the stone. Then she stepped back, shouldered the iron, and swung.
* * *
FLEEING FROM THE FOURTH SCENE OF MORE GRAVESITE DESECRATION than any one woman should have to commit, Sylvie’s nerves were fraying. Demalion, nice and neat, and far too quiet in the passenger’s seat, wasn’t helping. Behind them, a trail of mud led back to the military section of the cemetery, where Hughes’s and Sorenson’s graves gaped. Sylvie thought she’d be reading about that in the papers tomorrow, wished she’d had the luxury of time enough to cover up her excavations.
She licked her lips, tasted dirt, shuddered, and felt her determined optimism sinking alongside the sun. The jeep seemed unwieldy, unresponsive, and she pulled off the road.
Demalion looked up from the map he was frowning at. “What’s going on? The general’s estate is miles from here still. Why’d you stop?”
“I know where it is. Alex gave me the list, too. Key Largo, down by the boatyards,” she said. “God, what if we’re wrong? What if Strange’s lich ghost is perfectly content to eat her way through the city? What if Odalys isn’t at the general’s house? We really have no reason to believe Odalys is living in a dead man’s home—”
“No reason not to,” Demalion said. “Trust your instinct.”
“Zoe’s on the line,” she said, her throat tight. “Makes it a little hard to gamble.”
Demalion didn’t have a quick response for that. There was none to be had. Their choice of path was educated guesswork, based on a leap of logic. Sometimes that was all you got.
Five Hands, five dead people. Five choices. They’d dismissed three of them. Which left them with General Hughes and the wild-card lieutenant, who seemed to have had no permanent residence at all.
She shivered, cold even despite the sultry night. She wanted her old cases back. She wanted an enemy who bragged and left a trail a mile wide. Instead, she had guesswork and greed, a ghost-possessed man for backup, and her family at stake. She wanted her little dark voice to rouse her to rage, but it was quiescent.
“Sylvie,” Demalion said, “any choice is better than none.”
“Fine,” she said. “The general’s it is.”
Sylvie put the jeep in gear, bumped it back onto the road, and drove with disregard for the posted speed limits and the traffic. If she was wrong, if the general’s house wasn’t the right place, better to find out as soon as possible. She wished that the truck had panned out, that Suarez had called with a location. She got the truck back? She was installing a GPS unit and tracker.
Full dark had settled in by the time they found the address. General Stephen Hughes had a thirty-acre estate, a sizable holding on an island key, ringed round by an iron-spiked limestone wall, and an automated gate that was chained shut.
Sylvie got out of the jeep, walked up to the gate, peered through the dark. The plat, courtesy of Alex, showed the house at the back of the property, right on the water. The gate revealed a long driveway overhung by oaks laden with Spanish moss and air plants. She sniffed, wishing she had a werewolf nose, the better to scent anything, living or unliving. All she smelled was salt air, the heavy green scent of moss, and mown grass. She leaned against the gate, the metal cold against her heated face.
“Dead end?” Demalion asked.
“God,” Sylvie said. “Zoe . . . What am I going to tell my parents?”
“What did you tell mine?”
Rage flushed her, burned out despair, made her dirt-smeared hands on the gate shake, rattling the chain. She wheeled on him, and he took a step back, hands held high. She’d expected to see anger on his face, but there was only calculation.
Demalion knew her far too well. Knew what fueled her and would provide a reason for fury when she needed it to fuel her. The relief she felt nearly undid his efforts, and she snapped at him, “Is this really the time to bring that up? God, you’re going to throw that in my face forever. I died for you. . . .”
“It is a trump card, yes,” Demalion snapped back.
Wright, despite his urge to help and protect, didn’t know her ways, her cues, and kept her off balance, endangering both of them. Demalion, on the other hand, was backup.
She grinned at him, nasty and tight, and felt her nerves settle. So what if this was Zoe on the line? It only meant the stakes were higher.
The padlock was cheap enough, common enough—the basic locker-room combination lock—fed through a length of chain. In the distance, a shrill sound echoed, distorted over the water. A scream.
Sylvie picked up a rock and bashed the lock open. For a lock on a dead man’s land, it was shiny new, the chain still supple; it got regular use. Demalion shoved the gate, and Sylvie revved the jeep; he slid in, and they headed up the long drive as quickly as the shut-off headlights would allow. No sense in warning Odalys that they were on their way. She’d expect them, but every ounce of surprise counted.
Salt air curled about her hair, licked at her skin, left her thirsty. She turned her head to get away from a particularly invasive breeze, thinking, windows, cars should have windows, and said, “You hear that?”
Demalion closed his eyes, fell silent, turned his head from side to side. “Screaming.”
“Yeah,” she said. She picked up the pace, nearly jerked them off the driveway when a dark shape cannonballed out of the trees lining the drive and shrieked right under their engine.
“Peacock,” she muttered. “A goddamned peacock. We’re chasing a bird screaming—” She rounded the drive, and trailed off. The house was ablaze with light. The driveway held three cars; still pinging with warmth. Most damning of all, pulled right up to the front door, was Sylvie’s truck, its clawed hood nearly luminous in the dark.
She put a hand on his shoulder, keeping him in the jeep when he started to get out. “Demalion. You should stay here. There’s going to be a lot of ghost-inimical magic flying around.”
“I’m coming,” he said. “I know you, Sylvie. You want Odalys dead. I need her alive. If I’m to have any chance at a new life, new body, I need her skills, her information. And the ISI can and will get it from her.”
“Pretty cavalier with Wright’s body and soul, there. He might have a different opinion. Hell, he might want to wait in the car.”
Demalion shook his head. “No. He’s agreed to this.”
“Let him tell me.”
“Do we really have time?” Demalion said. “That ghost is—”
“Make time,” Sylvie said.
“You still don’t trust me.”
“You’re dead. You’re not exactly a neutral party here.” He lunged, not away but toward; his mouth found hers, clung tight. He kissed words against her lips, please and trust me, help me, and don’ts. She translated them, breathed back her answers: Yes, and I want to, and I’ll trys, and there was salt between them, seasoning her weak promises. They couldn’t be anything but weak; wanting didn’t translate to having, and guarantees couldn’t even cover electronics, much less human lives.
If there was no other way, she’d destroy Odalys along with the lich ghosts and leave Demalion stranded. It
was more than his life at stake, more even than Zoe’s. Odalys was far too practiced at necromancy for it to be a new talent; in all likelihood there was a long line of dead in Odalys’s past. She couldn’t leave that loose in her city.
She let her mouth linger against his for one silent moment, then pulled back, wiping at her eyes.
“Please,” he said, voice thinned, a warm wisp of a breeze on her throat. “I died once, Sylvie. It’s worse contemplating it a second time.”
She leaned her head against his shoulder. Against Wright’s shoulder.
“I have to ask him,” she said. “He can’t go in there blind.”
Demalion nodded. The body she leaned against, draped herself over, suddenly went boneless.
“Wright?” she murmured. She slid off his lap even as his hand tightened on her hip, an absent clutching for stability in an unstable world. He blinked.
“Sylvie,” he said.
“We found Odalys,” she said. “We’re going to stop her. It’s risky. You could sit this out. Your call.”
He was shaking his head by “risky.” “I’m a cop, Syl. I do risky for my career.”
“Demalion will take over again,” she said. “He’s pretty pushy—”
“He knows the field better’n I do. Less likely to freak out,” Wright said. He raised a shoulder, let it drop, a lazy shrug that didn’t quite mask his shaking hands. “I trust him,” he said finally. “I’m inside him. He’s inside me. We know each other. He’s worried about me, about you. He wants to call the ISI, but he’s holding off because you said so. Me, I still think we should call the cops.”
“And let the ghost munch their souls?” Sylvie asked.
Wright flickered a tense smile. “Noted. Get on with it. Sooner this is done, sooner he can get out of my head, sooner I can go—All your ethical crises done with?” Demalion finished his sentence. “Odalys is waiting.”
Sylvie collected the dirt bundles, each a thick, soft roll about the size of a tube sock, wrapped in brightly colored fabrics. Orange for the general. Green for his ADC. Cherry red for Ms. Li. And a gritty plastic bag full of ash for Margaret Strange.
Sylvie wished she had a charm against Odalys; her gun would just have to do. Even if she didn’t intend to kill, nothing was so good at breaking magical focus as pain. A single bullet might save them yet.
The house was old, 1920s in style, and showed signs of it. The wood trim, beneath peeling paint, was green-stained with years of mildew removed and painted over. The front door, though unlocked, required a push to get past the swollen jamb. But the stained-glass trim in the windows shone bright, graceful lines of an earlier time still clear, and the interior, once seen, managed to be both simple and luxurious.
The rooms were spare and uncluttered, the furnishings simple and of excellent quality. The rooms were also utterly empty of people, though Sylvie nudged Demalion’s shoulder in one of the brightly lit guest bedrooms, directed his attention to the scatter of belongings across the rumpled sheet.
“Think the general liked to feel pretty?” Demalion said.
“Only if he used Zoe’s color palette,” Sylvie said. “Stupid little bitch.”
“The house is empty,” Demalion said.
“No one alive in it,” Sylvie said, both agreement and counter. Her mouth was dry. The house was deceptive in size; rooms unfolded from rooms; the floor echoed in such a way that she thought there might be a rare root cellar. The teenagers could be dead; their bodies discarded anywhere. Zoe among them.
“Doesn’t smell,” Demalion said.
“Hasn’t been long enough,” she said, rejecting his reassurance.
A wash of warm air crept through an opened window down the hall, carried the faint drift of sound with it. A woman’s voice.
Sylvie stiffened like a hound catching scent. She headed for the back door; Demalion scrambling to catch up.
The backyard was brightly lit; lanterns spiked the grass, ringed the illuminated pool, rimmed the eaves of the house, and cast glimmering sparks on the black waves beyond. The pool slanted sharply, one end close to the house and beach, the other spread wide to accommodate limestone tiling and a dining area.
Sylvie gathered all of that in one dazzle, light against the dark sky, but her attention hooked hard on the demented tea party Odalys was hosting. Zoe, Jaz, Matteo, Trey, were trussed neatly to white-painted, wrought-iron pool chairs, tucked closely around the table as if any moment someone would serve a meal. But the meals on offer were the teens’ souls. Jaz and her boyfriends sagged in their bonds, their faces sallow and pained, even unconscious; their Hands of Glory had been returned to them, lay in their laps like hellish spiders. Beyond the table, nearing the edge of the limestone tile, beneath the shadows of gumbo limbo and poisonwood, Zoe, bound and gagged, kicked feebly at Odalys as the woman knelt beside her.
Odalys straightened up, smoothing Zoe’s hair absently. “Don’t fuss so. It’ll all be for the best. You want to be my apprentice, don’t you? I have a plan. Trust is a part of—”
Gun in hand, Sylvie stepped out to greet Odalys. “Trust doesn’t involve tying people up.”
“How dull your sex life must be,” Odalys said. Sylvie really didn’t like her expression, calculation mixed with satisfaction, as if she’d expected Sylvie to make it in time to—what? Play witness? Or something more sinister.
“Step away from my sister,” Sylvie said.
Odalys smiled and stepped behind Zoe, resting her hands on the girl’s shoulders. Zoe twitched, trying to push her hands off.
“I don’t think so,” Odalys said. “Even you wouldn’t shoot through your little sister to get to me.”
Sylvie kept the gun leveled. “You’re a lot bigger than she is. Demalion, untie the rest of them. Get them out of here.”
He moved around her, careful not to step between Sylvie and Odalys. He bent over Trey, seated the closest to the house. Trey’s chin lolled on his chest; his skin gleamed as white as the paint. Demalion straightened, face grim as his voice. “This one’s dead already.”
Sylvie’s attention flickered for a moment, a quick glance in Demalion’s direction, as if she could see the boy’s pulse not beat in the shadows of his throat, and it was all Odalys needed. Her hand came up, the lighter flaring bright, a thrown bridge through shadow, from one circle of light to the next, landing on the Hand of Glory in Matteo’s lap. Sylvie got off a single reflexive shot, jerking the gun skyward at the last, afraid she would hit Zoe; then the ghost lethargy crashed down on her, the ghostly miasma smothering her into darkness.
24
The Quick and the Dead
WHEN SYLVIE WOKE, IT WAS TO PINS AND NEEDLES ALL OVER; HER skin burned and itched, an enormity of discomfort so great that it took her long minutes to realize that things had changed. She had joined the ranks of bound-to-chairs; the wrought iron was savaging her spine through her empty holster. But as befitted an unwelcome guest, her chair had been dragged away from the table, closer to the house. Her gun was gone; her hands were tied, and the cloth bundles of grave dirt were attempting to burn holes through her flesh.
Damned Odalys, Sylvie thought. Gun versus a lighter, and the woman still got the jump on her.
The little dark voice growled. You didn’t take the kill shot. Always take the kill shot. Your fault, all of this.
She should have, Sylvie agreed. Forget that Odalys was human; forget that Demalion wanted Odalys alive. Given a second chance, a third chance, she’d shoot first.
Sounds of struggling, grunting, caught her attention. Cautiously, she turned her head, neck aching, to see what could be seen. Odalys, hair coming unpinned, skirt smeared with rust and dirt, was manhandling Demalion onto the table itself, having run out of chairs. Wright’s body might be long, might be lanky, but it was muscled. The task was made more difficult by the closeness of the other chairs, of Jaz’s and Matteo’s proximity to the table, and the ghosts pressing in close behind them.
Sylvie blinked. Was that? It was. Her gun lay unatten
ded on the table, bare inches from Demalion’s lax hand. Wake up, she thought. Goddammit, wake up!
She couldn’t understand why Odalys hadn’t killed them both. A glance at the blazing Hands of Glory suggested the answer. They were bait. A sop to Margaret Strange so that she wouldn’t interfere with the other ghosts and their transitions to flesh.
A cold blur at the edge of her vision, and Sylvie turned her head. The general’s ghost, standing beside the dead boy, jabbed an accusing finger at the boy’s corpse; the gape of his mouth shaped words Sylvie couldn’t hear. It didn’t matter; his gesturing was explicit, and Odalys’s response was clear enough.
“He didn’t tell me he had a bad heart. He’s a goddamned kid. I wasn’t trying to palm off a defective body on you. You’re no good to me if you gain the body and kick the bucket at the same time. I’ve been counting on my completion fee. I’ll give you a choice. Either take your lieutenant’s boy—”
The lieutenant’s ghost stepped back from the Matteo as if burned, offered the body to his general. The general shook his head, drifted toward Odalys, scowling. The lieutenant lashed out and began feeding off Matteo.
Odalys put up wary hands. “Okay, okay, not stranding your lieutenant. I get it. Here—what about this one?” She gestured toward Wright, splayed and trussed like some particularly gothic table centerpiece. “This one’s good. Yeah, it’s a little older and it might be a little work to get into; he’s doublesouled. But the body’s got training. Gun calluses come standard.”
Sylvie bridled, bit her lip to smother her shout of outrage. Odalys, the consummate saleswoman, selling things that didn’t belong to her. Selling people . . . Sylvie jerked harder in her bonds, felt the rope pop with the first tiny frayed thread, a small bite into the loops that held her. She couldn’t do anything to help Demalion until she got free. If Odalys found out she was awake, aware, she’d put a stop to that, and Sylvie wouldn’t wake up until it was all done, until there were strangers looking back at her through Zoe’s eyes, through Wright’s.
